Is this what the mysterious new 6-story concrete-frame mixed-use building going up behind the 11th St. Someburger in the Heights is supposed to look like? Sort of, but not exactly. The rendering of the project above (and a whole bunch more, below), found on the website of ZDA Architecture in San Antonio, shows a decked-out version of the more boxy structure that’s pictured on this new sign and that showed up on the corner of Studewood and 11th 1/2 St. yesterday:
This somewhat industrial stretch of Berry Rd. just west of Irvington on Houston’s Northside will soon be home to a new food-and-entertainment strip center developed by the Alamo Tamale Company. The 21,000-sq.-ft. theme center and parking lot were designed by Cisneros Design Studio Architects (local ethnographers among our readers may recognize Cisneros as the designer of Katy’s recently shuttered Forbidden Gardens). Lining up on the south-facing strip at 809 Berry will be the best in tamale-themed entertainment: a full-service restaurant, a cantina open late, a panaderia that’ll open early, a banquet and reception hall, and a raspa and dessert bar open primarily on weekends. But the featured destination will likely be the new Alamo Tamale storefront itself, next door to the company’s existing handmade tamale HQ. You should be able to pick it out quickly — it’s the one with the Alamo-like facade:
Late last week the Museum of Fine Arts Houston announced the names of 3 architecture firms selected as finalists to design the museum’s next expansion project. The new structure will go on the 2-acre parking lot at the northwest-ish corner of Bissonnet and Main. (Yes, that means the era of free MFAH parking is soon to be over.) The finalists are NYC’s Steven Holl Architects (designers of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City), Norwegian firm Snøhetta (designers of the roofwalk-friendly Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo), and LA’s Morphosis, (that’s their design for the Perot Museum of Nature & Science now under construction in Dallas, above). You can presume any possible competitors with some sort of Houston connection were axed from the list during the museum’s year-long series of interviews with 10 “international” design firms.
NEGOTIATING THE FIRST WARD FOR LAWYERS The new owner of Gravitas says the new partnership that recently bought the Taft St. restaurant from chef Scott Tycer plans to open a combination “gourmet sandwich grill, American craft beer garden and bourbon cocktail bar” suitable for “young attorneys and businessmen” at the corner of Houston Ave. and Crockett St.: “The lease on the location is still under negotiation, but [Stephen] Ross says the future design features indoor/outdoor space with garage doors, decks in the front and back, a bocce court and possibly lawn bowling.” [Culturemap]
A narrow 3-story restaurant space is planned for this long-vacant lot on Travis St. between Prairie and Preston, right next to Frank’s Pizza and Cabo’s. Plans submitted with a variance application for “Milli Place” show most of the seating would be on the second and third floors, each of which would have outdoor patio space. Why the variance? So the building can take advantage of an extra foot of width, and spread a full 31 feet along Travis St. We’ve squeezed in those narrow floor plans below:
A new “final” rendering is out for the second phase of Blvd Place, which includes a brand-new 48,500-sq.-ft. Whole Foods Market near the corner of Post Oak Blvd. and San Felipe just north of the Galleria (and yes, only a few feet east from the old Eatzi’s location), as well as two 4-story mixed-use buildings flanking it along Post Oak. Plus: a parking garage in back. The 4-story buildings (marked 1N and 2 on the recently updated site plan below) will have 2 office levels above 2 floors of retail, like the lone building in Blvd Place’s first phase, which opened last year a block south. Wulfe & Co.’s Elise Weatherall tells Swamplot the remaining portion of the old Pavilion on Post Oak on the site will be demolished this fall; construction on the new Whole Foods and the adjacent buildings is scheduled to begin about the same time, with everything opening in the first half of 2013.
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COMMENT OF THE DAY: THERE’S A NEW DRY BUFFALO LAKE IN MY BACK YARD 
“I just did a google maps search of my place and I noticed the giant lake that they dug out in my ‘backyard’ for this mysterious Buffalo Lakes project. You would never [have] guessed something was going on back there because of the heavily wooded area. No water filled in yet but they cleared out the entire tract. I kept hoping something would develop back there and looks like there is finally some activity. . . .” [Chris, commenting on Gardening from the Sky] Plan: Kirksey Architecture
THE TOP-SECRET DOWNTOWN LOCATION OF HOUSTON’S NEW FREETAIL BREWPUB The Freetail Brewing Co.’s second-ever brewpub will go into 20,000 sq. ft. of “a historic building in downtown Houston,” the company announced today. What’s the address? “Out of respect to the developer, the exact location cannot be named at this time,” reads the press release. Respect! Oh, yeah, and a few details are still to be worked out, including some financing that’ll need to be complete within 90 days. The $4.2 million facility will span 3 floors of the mystery building and include a company store, plus restaurant and bar space. It appears the Houstonification of the San Antonio company has already begun: “Unlike Freetail’s original location, which is primarily one big room with a patio overlooking the Texas hill country, Freetail Houston will feature traditional restaurant seating, private dining space, and a “game room†with pool tables, shuffleboard, darts and numerous televisions.” We’re guessing that downtown building isn’t on a pad site by the freeway, though. [Beer, TX]
Actual trees are still standing in the Magnolia Grove lot where that live-oak clearance event began last month. What’s left: A little street mustache lining Feagan St., between Snover and Jackson Hill. The reader who sent these photos — and says she appreciates “raw” local real-estate news — wants to know what’s going in.
Atlanta’s Post Properties has announced that it’s ready to get started with a third phase of its Midtown Square mixed use development, notes Houston’s InnerLooped blog. A rendering of the project on the front cover of a recent company financial report (above) may not be the latest, though — that looks like a 2005 date scribbled in the bottom right corner. The $21.8 million development will include 124 apartments and 10,864 sq. ft. of street-level retail and should begin opening mid-to-late next year, the company says. The apartment units should run a little smaller on average than those in the existing Post Midtown Square complex at 302 Gray St. Post Properties hasn’t responded to our request for details about the development’s exact location, but the rendering appears to show the view looking east from the narrow corner of West Gray and Webster in the Fourth Ward, a few blocks west of Post’s existing outpost of street activity.
Rendering: Post Properties
WEST AVE READY TO PUSH WEST 
Catie Brubaker reports that West Ave is set to begin construction on an expansion in January, consisting of 270 new apartments and 150 new retail parking spaces. The new development will go in the fenced area west of the existing garage, north of Kipling St. and just south of the Regency House condos. Isn’t this area marked “Phase III” on circulated site plans? Yes. The much larger development originally labeled Phase II — stretching all the way south to West Alabama and west to Virginia St. — has now apparently been switched to a later, third phase. Planned for that much bigger extension: “350 multifamily units, a 175-key hotel, 100k SF of office, and an additional 275k SF of retail. Nick [Hernandez of Page Partners] says Page is ‘way down the road’ on preleasing, especially for restaurants.” [Real Estate Bisnow; previously on Swamplot] Photo: West Ave River Oaks
GULF FREEWAY OUTLET MALL SITE: UP FOR GRABS? 
A possible complication in those plans to put a new 95-store outlet mall between the Big League Dreams sports complex and the Bay Colony shopping center west of the Gulf Freeway in League City: The Galveston County Daily News‘s Laura Elder reports that the 35 acres of land Tanger Factory Outlet Centers was hoping to purchase out of bankruptcy for $8.7 million will be going up for auction instead in just 10 days. A bankruptcy court ordered the sale last week. Tanger announced the project in January, just days after the Simon Property Group announced its plans to build another outlet center, the 100-store Galveston Premium Outlets, just 4 miles to the south, in Texas City. [Laura Elder’s Buzz Blog; previously on Swamplot] Rendering: Tanger Outlets
While thousands of ExxonMobil employees wait patiently to hear confirmation from the oil giant’s tight-lipped management about their rumored “possible” consolidation in a brand-new enormous office campus just south of The Woodlands, aerial photos that show work proceeding on the site have shown up in an update to Google Maps. The photo update appears to be relatively recent; it shows a level of clear-cutting similar to what was evident in the images leaked to Swamplot last month, which dated from March 12:
TRADER JOE’S IS NOW LOOKING TO OPEN STORES IN HOUSTON You heard that right. The Dallas Morning News is announcing that private-label grocer Trader Joe’s plans to open 30 10 stores in Texas and is now actively scouting sites. The California-based chain is reportedly “looking at multiple locations in Dallas, Houston and Austin.” The first store would likely open in Dallas, within the year. [Dallas Morning News]
FLAGSHIP COLLAPSEÂ KILLS 
The 65-year-old demolition worker from Utah who was trapped after a portion of the Flagship Hotel collapsed on him yesterday died from his injuries less than an hour after he was rescued. Landry’s, the owner of the hotel, is tearing it down in order to add amusement rides to the 25th St. pier it sits on. An investigation is currently underway, and Galveston’s fire chief tells reporter Laura Elder that there’s still danger of another collapse: “Ardent, the contractor of record, could have brought in subcontractors to handle the job, and the city was in the process of determining Tuesday what company employed the injured man, city of Galveston spokeswoman Alicia Cahill said.
Crews demolished the hotel to the second floor slab. It rested, partially collapsed, at an angle with the westernmost edge appearing to touch the floor of the pier.
The injured man was in a void of concrete, [Fire chief Jeff] Smith said.
‘Entrapment time was about 20 minutes, and he had about 1,000 pounds of weight on top of him,’ Smith said.” [Galveston County Daily News; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Click2Houston
